Background about Jerry Scott

As co-creator of Baby Blues and Zits, he is one of just four cartoonists in history to have two daily comics strips running in more than 1,000 newspapers each.

Born May 2, 1955 in South Bend, Indiana, he was first introduced to the newspaper business by delivering the South Bend Tribune from his bicycle over pre-dawn Indiana roads. “I was pulling down maybe three figures a year, but the real reward wasn’t the money. It was that I got to be the first person in my neighborhood to read the comics on Sunday mornings. By flashlight.”

Jerry started cartooning professionally in the mid-1970s by selling a cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post. In 1983 he took over the comic strip, Nancy, which he continued to reinvent for 12 years. In 1988, he got together with longtime friend Rick Kirkman and started kicking ideas around for a new strip. The result was Baby Blues, which was released in syndication in 1990. Baby Blues currently runs in more than 1,100 newspapers in 30 countries and 13 languages. There are more than 30 Baby Blues collection books in print, with well over a million copies sold.

In 1996, Jerry had an idea for a comic strip about a teenage boy, and along with the artistic genius of Jim Borgman, Zits was born. First syndicated in an impressive 200 newspapers, King Features now distributes Zits to more than 1,600 papers in 45 countries and 15 languages. Zits has been collected in 20 anthologies.

Scott has received numerous cartooning awards, including the National Cartoonists Society’s Best Comic Strip of the Year three times, the Adamson Statuette, Sweden’s highest comic honor, and Germany’s Max and Moritz Award for Best International Comic Strip. Jerry is proudest of receiving the Reuben Award in 2001 from the National Cartoonists Society as Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year.

Jerry lives in California with his wife, Kim and their two daughters, from whom he steals ideas daily.